Steam

It is funny that people think Valve would sell out instead of becoming the big evil.

As Valve continues developing an OS agnostic platform, they start building into various tools that require a Steam account to play games in order to defend their app store. Maybe they buy Unity and make it a Steam exclusive, maybe they make their own engine that can be played on Windows or Linux.

Integrate Chromecast technology to make a console like multimedia device to compete against XBox and PlayStation. Then, start selling video and integrating streaming access.

Push the Steam Store to become bigger. Sure, you aren't forced to use the Steam Store on most Valve developed hardware, but it is default.

Then, like Google did with Android, pull the tech stack from the open source tools to become wholely integrated with Steam Services.

I already have enough games to last a lifetime, stored to my storage

I think your fear is justified. Gaben needs a personal trainer

GOG.
We need to support GOG and it's model as much as possible.

<3

Well, at least we’ve got global climate change and multiple other threats to the survival of humanity, we won’t have to worry for long.

Well thankfully Gabe has lost a ton of weight in recent years. Man is looking absolutely svelte these days. Here's hoping he has many more years of good health.

I'm also guessing he'll hand pick a successor that will carry on his views, instead of dying in office and having some kind of CEO election free-for-all.

I think Gabe has been getting healthy lately. Last picture I saw of him he was looking like he lost a lot of weight. Maybe repost this in 10 years and then we can panic.

I don't know why Gabe Newell would die before 75

Piracy is a service problem. They'll reap what they sow if they change course. I'm not afraid to hoist my sails again when I need to. ;)

PC gaming is not here to stay. One day, someone, will finally do a cloud /saas streaming solution which works, which solves the latency and fidelity issues and which will be accepted and trusted by the masses.

Hopefully that will be a Valve solution. Not Nvidia, MS, Google or Sony.

From that moment on the client will not matter anymore and you will just stream it to your device and from there cast it to your big screen.

Hopefully I'm full of shit and this will never happen. But I'm afraid I'm not.

A billionaire who is 61 is very likely to outlive 75, even if they're fat.

What will happen to the Steam Deck? Will they discontinue it and support for existing units, or replace the OS with Windows (causing degraded performance and exposing their users to Microsoft adtech enshittification)? The Steam Deck is a star product of theirs, which hopefully will count for something.

I think there are important considerations to keep in mind.

First and foremost, Valve is not a public company. I don't know if it has investors, but it is not driven by profits like many typical public companies are. These companies tend to allow themselves longer investments without any clear visibility of immediate profits. They also do things for the greater good, even though it does not bring profits.

But also, I think the whole of valve is a set of gamers and people who genuinely care about the gaming business and making great products. I think they all share Gabe's values and goals. It's not like Gabe is the only one holding everything together or else it would instantly crash into the profit driven company it could be.

Both of these scenarios keep me hopeful that this is a longer lasting stance and doesn't hinge on just one person. It's not a proof it will never be a typical profit company but these are barriers which are not typically present. Let's hope for the best and keep rewarding them for their contributions to gaming, open source and for their good actions.

Proton is open source. Anyone can pull it together and integrate it. Gog have been doing DRM free games for a while, they'll be quite keen to fill this niche. Epic probably won't care. If none do, someone will want to.